Hatred Looms Large in the Dark
by Kalcifier
Summary: Running from a pack of unsupervised children, Adachi puts himself into a TV. The experience is less terrible than he'd expected.


This was written for shrapelhorn on tumblr for the Persona Secret Santa 2018. Writing Adachi POV is ridiculously fun, between the edge and the blatantly self-serving interpretation of events, so thank you for giving me a reason to do it. Happy holidays!

Title is from the DAN version of Backside of the TV, because you can't go into the TV without it blaring through your mind.

* * *

After the initial mess, Adachi had mostly stayed away from TV screens. There was no point in getting his hands dirty when Namatame had things so well in hand. He may have given the game a slight nudge to keep Kubo from ruining it, but otherwise, he was happy to sit back and watch.

He certainly hadn't tried going into one himself. By the time he had proof that it was possible to survive, those obnoxious kids were running around the TV world like they owned the place. Going in would just have drawn unwanted suspicion to him. Even worse, he would have had to put up with their ridiculous self-righteousness.

He didn't have any better options, though. He'd managed to fuck up in front of the only people who would have noticed, and of course those damn brats couldn't let anything go. They even managed to get Dojima on their side. It figured that the guy would trust a bunch of children over his own partner.

So now here he was, running through the halls of a hospital to escape a pack of kids with delusions of grandeur. This was why he hated living in the sticks.

The only thing the place had going for it was the quality of its electronics. For some middle of nowhere hospital to have TVs this nice, there had to be something going on behind the scenes, some politician donating them to draw attention away from a scandal. Adachi was hardly going to complain, though. They were about to save his life. Wasn't that what hospitals were all about?

There was only one room that he was sure would have a TV large enough, which is how Adachi found himself back in the room that had once held Namatame. It was a shame he wasn't going to be around to see the sap's trial. He would have loved to watch the police dance around what they were actually accusing Namatame of.

And now he was stalling. He was right in front of the TV, but convincing himself to go through was more difficult than he'd thought. It would be much less fun if his own body was the next one found hanging from a power line.

The thundering of feet in the hallway was an excellent motivator. If those morons could find their way out again, so could he, and anything was better than listening to their naïve speeches.

He crammed himself into the TV screen.

He wasn't sure what to expect on the other side, but he hadn't been prepared for such a long fall. He hit the ground hard. It was sheer luck he didn't land on his gun and break something.

He pulled himself to his feet, muttering a few choice curses, and looked around. His first thought was that the other world was incredibly yellow. The fog was everywhere, thick and cloying, making it impossible to tell where he was. He could hear creatures moving in it, though. Every now and then one would make a sound almost like human speech.

So he was standing in an alternate dimension full of monsters that would gladly murder him when it rained, and he couldn't even see anything. Great.

He would have loved to stand around and gawk some more, but he didn't trust the so-called Investigation Team not to dive in after him. He'd like to think he could take a gaggle of children, but he had to admit that they knew this world better than he did. It would be just his luck if they managed to trip him into a portal back to reality.

The fog stretched out in every direction, an unbroken field of sickly yellow. He shrugged and started to walk.

He quickly realized the flaw in his plan. There was no way for him to keep track of how long or how far he'd come. Any changes in the landscape were subtle, easily lost in the fog, and there was no sun. He would just have to hope he didn't need to get back to where he'd started.

It didn't really matter to him anyway. He was too busy thinking about how much he hated Inaba, this fucking hick town where the only way to keep from dying of boredom was to watch a bunch of goody-two-shoes teenagers fumble around trying to solve a murder. Talk about pathetic.

And even then, the kids couldn't just be satisfied that Adachi was distracting them from their meaningless daily lives. They had to take things too far and ruin his fun. They probably didn't even notice what massive hypocrites they were, too young and too stupid to know anything about how the world really worked. Fuck them, and fuck this lifeless backwater town. He was ready to burn the entire place to the ground.

He was so caught up in his internal monologue that he didn't notice the rubble until he was stumbling over it. God, even the magic in this town sucked. He could escape to another reality and still have to deal with the sundry miseries of daily life.

He looked up and saw for the first time where the rubble was from. A twisted version of Inaba sprawled before him. Gone were the perfectly straight rows of picturesque rural buildings. In their place, distorted blocks of concrete and iron lay scattered across the landscape. Everything was plastered in street signs and caution tape. It wasn't the layer of ash and ruin he'd been picturing, but honestly, this was even better. This was a way to make people confront everything they'd been trying to ignore. Strip away the pretty façade of forced cheer and this was what the world really was.

The voices in the fog were growing more distinct. They whispered to him about the nature of this world, how it was shaped by human minds and reflected their most secret desires. Experimentally, he imagined a hole being blown in the nearest wall. There was a satisfying wrenching sound as the metal forced itself apart.

He smiled. This was more like it. He had power here, and he wouldn't even have to put up with morons like Namatame to use it. It was just him and his first real taste of freedom.

The voices in the shadows continued to fill his ears, telling him that this was what the world could be. All humanity had to do was give in. It was already happening in Inaba, the fog seeping in between the cracks and eroding the bullshit social niceties everyone pretending to love. There would be no need for pretense in this coming world. All he had to do was wait, and he would be able to do whatever he wanted. It would be beautiful.

And if those damn kids tried to stop it, well, he'd just have to show them what freedom really meant.


End file.
